"Hitchcock" is about two men with murder in their hearts. One of them is the title character, the pear-shaped film director who channeled his demons and an obsession with icy blonds into such films as "Rear Window," "Vertigo" and "North by Northwest."

If he hadn't the talent and opportunity to do so, he might have turned out like another man, Plainfield, Wis., native Ed Gein, who confessed to killing two women and whose house was found filled with parts of bodies exhumed from graveyards.

Over the years, many storytellers have used Gein and his gruesome actions and motives as a way to explore the darker aspects of the human condition. But the first to do so was Alfred Hitchcock, the British director whose psychological thrillers made him a globally popular and commercially successful brand.

His decision to film the gritty "Psycho," based on a novel by Milwaukee writer Robert Bloch that was inspired by Gein's crimes, was based on Hitchcock's desire - need, really - to explore beyond the acceptable and take the audience with him.

"Psycho" seems almost innocent today, when graphic and sordid material is commonplace. But its portrait of perversion challenged the cultural censors and social mores of 1960, when it was released. The strict standards of the era forced Hitchcock to find non-explicit ways to portray the horror - ways that remain shocking, innovative and distinctive today.

The screenplay for "Hitchcock" is adapted from a book by a writer who conducted the last interview with Hitch, as everyone calls him; he died in 1980. It tries to squeeze in all the above plus the director's complicated marriage to his longtime behind-the-scenes collaborator, editor and ghost writer Alma Reville, played by Helen Mirren, into a streamlined, 98-minute package.

Sacha Gervasi, director of the documentary "Anvil! The Story of Anvil," skims across the surface of a bullet-point-caliber screenplay without context or backstory. A fork in the road - Hitchcock's jealously over Reville's infatuation with another writer - gives Mirren something to do. In fact, she gives a sturdy performance as the long-suffering helpmate geniuses seem to require.

Playing Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins is a mountain of prosthetics. But his portrayal hits all the right, disturbingly quiet notes and the impersonation quickly settles into performance.

He is a demanding, cruel, needy and vulnerable Jabba the Hutt, inhaling cigars, booze and food through puckered lips and conversing with Gein, who appears to him, like Marley in "A Christmas Carol," as a ghost of the man he could have become.